Guest Contributor: John Jeter
A mess of things strikes you about Erin Enderlin when she performs.
One is, you hope she keeps playing bars and doesn’t become one of those big-arena, spangled-up, lipstick-‘n’-pop-band country stars. Her show’s as intimate as a jukebox, although healthier than the one she writes about in one of the songs she performed in a sold-out Greenville, S.C., show on February 15th.
The other thing is you get from her is the feeling that she just left her writing room and started performing a few weeks ago. But she’s been a singer/songwriter for a couple of decades. In fact, Reba just cut another of the songs Enderlin performed that’s coming out on her new album in April. Not to mention, she’s toured with Willie and a ton of others and she’s going on tour with Jamey Johnson this year.
You’d think a veteran of her hard-won experience would be jaded. Nope, she’s got a freshness and apparent contentment that’s a world away from the whiskey-dipped characters she writes about. She writes a lot about whiskey, as in, “I Can Be Your Whiskey.”
Finally, the other thing you get from an Enderlin show: she’s generous. She pours double shots of stories—those about herself and those of her characters– the kind you’d see if Marty Stuart taught Faulkner to be a songwriter. She’s compassionate with her tear- and booze-streaked heroes and heroines, too. They say that in order to be a great artist, you’ve got to have “generosity of spirit.” She’s got that in spades.
When Enderlin played to an intimate room in Greenville, she sounded like a self-assured songwriter but definitely not a diva. She’s a writer who simply wanted to stand up on stage and talk and strum about people—people she makes you feel empathy for, too.
You get to wondering how she knows such broke-down people and just how many laps she’s swum in a vast pool of Jack Daniel’s.
You don’t wonder about the real-life stars she knows. It seems like she knows everybody in Nashville or, at least, has toured with them or had one of them cut an Enderlin tune. Lee Ann Woman recorded “Last Call”; Luke Bryan sang “You Don’t Know Jack” and Alan Jackson, one of the newest Hall of Fame Inductee’s—well, his take on her “Monday Morning Church” in 2004 cemented her on the country-music map.
Listening to her talk about Willie and Merle, Jamey Johnson and Reba, and playing at the Opry and knowing those who run the place, etc. etc., you’d think she’d come off as boastful. Instead, she’s got a generous dose of gratitude in her, so she sounds more like, “well, this happened and that happened I got to meet and work with these big names, and I feel lucky.” Not quite aw shucks, but more like, “you ride the broncing bull of Nashville and wind up in so many piles of Brahmin-strength shit, you’re bound to find some big-star hands who’re going to pull you up; they’ve been there, too, and they see you’ve put in one helluva ride.”
She takes her crowds along for the ride, too, a vicarious one to be sure. But she uses no cattle prod to steer a full house. She lets her songs and her voice do the work.
Her 18-song set included the likes of “The Bar’s Getting Lower,” which Reba cut; “Ain’t It Just Like A Cowboy”; “Whole ‘Nother Bottle of Whiskey”; and “I Let Her Talk,” a redemptive bummer of a song about a woman at a bar listening to another woman cry about the shithead she’s having an affair with. Good times.
She also throws in some sweet covers, songs you’d think she wrote because she so thoroughly owns ‘em: “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys,” from Waylon and Willie and “Long Black Veil,” from Lefty Frizzell. Her cat is also named Porter, as in “Hey Porter.”
Yes, she talks about her cat. In fact, her stage-patter voice sounds a bit like a purr, softer, less country-fied than her vocals; that tone also adds to that feel of an un-self-prepossessing cowhand telling hard tales around a trailhead campfire.
Her singing voice, on the other hand, is a dynamic alto with the taste and texture of a thick, original-flavor beefy jerky. Her guitar, a 1964 Gibson J-200, booms with a deep richness that creates something of a soft landing for characters who damn sure need one.
Great artists, those with that generosity of spirit, leave you with stories you won’t forget. The toughest part about Enderlin’s show at the Velo Fellow, a small listening room in a tertiary market, came at the end of her 90-minute set when you got the feeling, ‘well, I just saw country’s next major performing star on her way to a Jumbotron.’
Sarah Goulette, a local indie-folk performer, opened the show with several covers and strong originals, her voice as dynamic as a pinball machine that would sit next to Enderlin’s jukebox. Goulette attended Converse College, whose Music Business students promoted Enderlin’s show as a real-world class. Goulette delivered a tight and lively 30-minute set that jumpstarted the energy for Enderlin to pour out her whiskey-songs in a room with the feel of a smoky old barroom; if you missed her in that soft-lighted room, you’ll have to catch her next at the local arena.
In that respect, Greenville got lucky. Rolling Stone says of her new release: “Enderlin’s latest album, Whiskeytown Crier, produced by Jamey Johnson, features one of her first Nashville roommates, Chris Stapleton, and a duet with Randy Houser, as well as covers of songs by Gram Parsons (‘Hickory Wind’) and Tammy Wynette (‘Till I Can Make It in My Own’). The LP is available now.”
Set list:
- Caroline
- Baby Sister
- The Bar’s Getting Lower (Reba recorded)
- Whole ‘Nother Bottle Of Wine
- I Can Be Your Whiskey
- Jesse Joe’s Cigarettes
- You Don’t Know Jack
- Tennessee Whiskey
- Ain’t It Just Like A Cowboy
- The Blues Are Alive & Well
- I Let Her Talk
- Broken
- Easy From Now On
- Long Black Veil
- Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
- World Without Willie
- These Boots
- Last Call